Technical Field
The subject matter described herein generally relates to methods and apparatuses for parallel scanning of channels in communication networks, such as a wireless local area network (WLAN).
Description of Related Art
Communication systems typically support wired and wireless communications between communication devices. Communication systems operate in accordance with one or more communication standards, such as Ethernet or IEEE 802.11/Wi-Fi. Depending on the type of communication system, a wireless communication device, such as a cellular telephone or laptop computer, may communicate directly or indirectly with other wireless communication devices. For direct communication (i.e., point-to-point), the participating wireless communication devices tune their transceivers to the same channel(s) (e.g., one of a variety of channels in an operating frequency range of the wireless communication system) and communicate over those channel(s). For indirect communication, each wireless communication device communicates directly with an associated access point via an assigned channel.
Thus, for indirect wireless communication, a wireless communication device typically performs a scanning operation to discover access points that are available to communicate with the wireless communication device. Conventionally, the scanning operation includes sending a probe request and listening for probe request response(s) from available access points in a sequential manner, scanning one channel at a time until all channels have been scanned for a particular frequency band. The scanning operation may continue with respect to another frequency band if the wireless device is capable of operating in that frequency band. The length of the scanning operation depends on the number of channels and/or frequency bands that are to be scanned. The longer the scanning operation, the more power is consumed. Many wireless communication devices are mobile devices that are battery-powered. Thus, power conservation (e.g., powering down transceivers) is important, especially for wireless communication devices.